"I have no regrets about what I said because you know what? I was disappointed we didn't get to the Finals and I expressed that," he said. "I expressed that if there was a deal to be made, I'd make it. There was no deal to be made. But I still feel the same way I felt at the press conference -- frustrated and ticked off that we didn't make it back to the Finals. That's not going to change."

Neither is his approach to changing his mix.

"The deals that were presented were not good deals for us," he said. "We come back with a strong team and you say, 'We'll tee it up again.' I refuse to make a bad deal.

"What you'll see more than anything else is the youth that we have will come to the forefront," he said. "Right now, we have nine or 10 guys who are 29 or younger."

If things go sour, or a potential trade partner sweetens the pot, the long-anticipated blockbuster deal could still come to fruition. Dumars has laid plenty of groundwork to facilitate such a move.

"When you let people know that you're open, it's always out there," he said. "If you're serious about doing a deal, they know you're open. I left it at that and that's all you can do.

"I already have a good team. I'm not in a position where I'm forced to do a risky deal -- 'I don't know how this deal is going to work out.' It's either do a good deal or don't do a deal at all.

"There's nothing to patch up," he said. "If there was, I never heard about it. Guys understand that six straight years you get to the conference finals and you only get to the Finals twice, I wasn't going to rest on that and say, 'Well done. Great job, guys.' You have to keep pushing the envelope. That's what I did after the season and that's what I'm continuing to do."